A medical examiner in Virginia has ruled that former press secretary James Brady’s recent death is the result of a homicide, stemming from the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan in 1981. Brady passed away earlier this week at the age of 73 and the Office of the Medical Examiner for the Northern District of Virginia found that the “grievous injuries he suffered 33 years ago” were the cause. From The Washington Post:

The ruling was made by the medical examiner’s office in Virginia, where Brady, 73, died in an Alexandria retirement community, and was announced Friday by Gwendolyn Crump, the D.C. police department’s chief spokeswoman.

There was no immediate word on whether the shooter, John W. Hinckley Jr., who has been treated at St. Elizabeths psychiatric hospital since his trial, could face new criminal charges. Hinckley, 59, was found not guilty by reason of insanity after he shot Reagan and three others on March 30, 1981.

But the decision to pronounce Brady’s death a homicide 33 years after he was wounded outside the Washington Hilton on Connecticut Avenue NW raises questions about whether prosecutors can, and will, try to get around double jeopardy — the legal concept that protects a person from being tried twice for the same crime — and pursue a murder charge.

The attempted assassination left Brady with partial paralysis and slurred speech, but his the most last effects would be the gun control legislation that would bear his name. From USA Today:

The Brady Handgun Violence and Prevention Act remains perhaps the most consequential piece of firearms legislation since its passage in 1993, analysts said.

In the more than two decades since President Bill Clinton signed the law, which requires background checks on firearms purchases from federally licensed dealers, it has blocked the transfer of about 2 million guns.

“Clearly, (the Brady law) has been the most important factor in keeping guns away from the people who shouldn’t have them,” former Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives director John Magaw said. “It was a historic and strong piece of legislation.”

As quoted above, prosecutors have not stated if they will seek to charge John Hinckley with any criminal charges stemming from the decision. Hinckley has been under varying degrees of psychiatric care since being found not guilty by reason of insanity, seeking more freedoms in recent years. That might change as a result of this ruling. From The Washington Post:

“They are going to have to look at the legal questions,” he said. “They are going to have to look at the factual questions, if they can really show the direct linkage [between the assault and Brady’s death] beyond a reasonable doubt. And then they are going to have to make the decision about whether it is the right thing to do.”

Mark MacDougall, a former federal prosecutor, said “the real hurdle for the government would seem to be proving, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Hinckley actually caused Mr. Brady’s death 33 years after the shooting.”

It is certainly an odd turn of events and one that will be interesting to keep an eye on in the coming weeks. I’m unaware of any other cases where someone has been found to be murdered a few decades after the fact, at least under these types of circumstances.

It’s still not stranger than Hinckley’s reasons for attempting the assassination though. All stemming from a wayward attempt to impress Jodi Foster.

All the joking aside the medical examiner considered an incident that occurred 33 years ago the cause of death and is calling it murder. The medical examiner has to be a liberal looking to make their 2 second fame, but this is going to open a big can of worms and fester out of control like most things liberals do because the don’t take the time to consider there actions let alone be accountable for anything they say or do. If prosecutors try to get around double jeopardy rule a lot of people better start worrying about things they did in their past. And yes this means what one would think was already ruled upon in a court of law can and will be re trailed for the same crime twice. Remember people and be warned you might have been that person driving a car when someone walked out in front of you and they got hurt. They die 30 or 40 years later and some moron medical examiner calls it murder. Even though you already went through the court system with what ever was handed out, this gives them the power to come back and go through everything again, but with a murder charge.

Yes, this is definitely a liberal doing evil liberal things to make liberalism liberal liberal liberal.

Because when you think “medical examiner from Virginia” that’s practically PETA fucking Code Pink, right? And if a dirty liberal were looking to make political hay out of a shooting, well, he’d have to reach back to 1981 because there haven’t been any more recently, right?

I have no idea what the liberal thing is but it’s not double jeopardy. He was never charged with murder, just attempted and he was found not guilty by reason of insanity. If you are charged with attempted and then later that person dies you can be charged with murder. Whole new charges.

Wait, how can this be a “liberal” agenda thing when the man who suffered from this shooting was a conservative? Do we know the political leanings of this ME? No. This was a bill that was back by both parties…before everything was simply us vs them. I use to think the preservation of life was a purely humanistic thing to do. Sigh*

It’s actually nothing like that, Gabriel. Then again, you think the solution to me not wanting angry idiots to fire bullets at people is for me to not buy a gun, so maybe you just see connections I don’t.

What disconnect? That you’re taking a label on a stance on abortion to a literal nonsensical extreme that implies those holding that belief need not see fault with any choices made ever, or your disconnect from reality that leads you to believe that people don’t like others having guns based on some moral or religious code and not because they have a direct and permanent effect on others?

Wait, so now the disconnect has nothing to do with the rhetoric of being “pro choice,” it’s simply holding the belief that things are capable of being regulated? That rules limiting freedoms, when those freedoms infringe upon others, cannot exist (i.e. laws)?

You know what, you’re right, there is no point to this, not because I don’t believe there’s a discussion to be had here, but because there is no sincerity present, and the topic would demand that and more. I would love to talk about all the ways in which I am and am not anti-gun, and, perhaps more importantly, why, but you already know why. It’s because everyone is after your guns.

I do hope you consider, however, that you were the one who felt the need to shut down a conversation that wasn’t even happening until you arrived. For someone who feels wholly sure of their victory, you’re fighting conspicuously hard to snuff out even the most innocuous of perceived threats.

Not insane at all. Just as you can murder someone falling to their (certain) death by shooting them. They died prematurely, or possibly they would have survived the fall.

There is no statute of limitations on homicide. This prevents what happens in other places like Brazil, where evidence can be hidden long enough for the statute to expire and then they can freely admit it.

I did not write this. It is from a comment made by a user on another similar site, a right-wing pro-gun site (TTAG). I’m pasting it in as it explains what this means:

I’m a retired forensic pathologist who did my fellowship in New Mexico. A medicolegal death investigation attempts to answer several questions including the cause and manner of death.

Cause of death is just that: what killed the individual. It can be divided into the immediate and underlying cause(s) of death. The immediate cause of death is the illness or injury that leads to death. The underlying cause of death is the illness or injury that started the chain of events that leads to death. So long as that chain is unbroken, there is no time limit. The underlying cause of death may have occured days, weeks, months, or decades, but as long as the chain is unbroken, it doesn’t matter. For example, someone who falls off a ladder and breaks his neck, thus becoming a quadriplegic, will usually suffer from chronic complication of that injury such as aspiration pneumonia, chronic urinary tract infections which can lead to renal failure, etc. If he eventually dies from one of these complications, the immediate cause of death may be aspiration pneumonia (for example), but the underlying cause of death is blunt force trauma due to the fall. Since aspiration pneumonia is a common complication of quadripegia it is reasonable to conclude that his death was initiated by his injury and since he never recovered from that injury, the chain remains intact even if the time between his initial injury and death is years apart. Now, if he had died from something not related, such as prostate cancer, then the cause of death would simply be prostate cancer.

Manner of death is simply a classification of death, and is divided into natural, homicide, suicide, and accident. If the manner is unclear or unresolved, it remains undetermined. Note that this classification has no legal bearing in court. It is quite possible for the medical examiner and the court to reach different conclusions in terms of manner of death. Also, homicide in terms of classification by the medical examiner, is a neutral term and covers culpable and non-culpable homicide.

So in my example above, the manner of death would be accident since the initiating event was a fall from a height. Or if it was an intentional jump, it would be classified as suicide. If he was pushed, then it would be a homicide. So in the case of Mr. Brady, if the immediate cause of death was a complication that resulted from his gunshot wound, then the death would correctly be classified as a homcide.